'Before Sunrise" is about a young American man and a young French woman who meet on a train in Europe, get off together in Vienna and spend 14 hours walking around the city before separating, probably forever.

It's about the sights and sounds of Vienna and two people talking -- and that's all, if judged coldly in terms of screen action. But the film captures much more. It's a lovely and wistful celebration of youth, time and moments of connection -- and about the experience of living in the midst of a simple, perfect day that you know you'll remember for the rest of your life.

You have to admire the confidence of writer-director Richard Linklater ("Slackers," "Dazed and Confused") in believing that 1) he could make the film work; and 2) that anyone would want to see it.

CHARACTERS AS ABSTRACTIONS

The film, which opens today, gambles big, pursuing an emotion that is powerful yet elusive. It eases viewers into a unique participation, in which they see the characters both as fictional entities and as abstractions, virtual stand-ins for themselves. The film succeeds by fulfilling the audience's one demand: that it be honest every second.

"Before Sunrise" dares to be boring. It's like "My Dinner With Andre," but without Andre.

The people here, the young American, Jesse (Ethan Hawke), and the French student, Celine (Julie Delpy), are not extraordinary in themselves. They're just experiencing something extraordinary, or at least something that feels extraordinary: the one-day romance.

They meet on a train from Budapest heading toward France. Their first conversation, in the lounge car, plays as completely off the cuff, yet it introduces After a chance encounter on a train, Julie Delphy and Ethan Hawke spend 14 hours together in Vienna in 'Before Sunrise' some of the film's ideas.

He tells her he wants to start a cable channel in which the lives of average dull people would be followed from waking to sleeping. And she tells him that she is "afraid of death 24 hours a day."

With that the film lays it out: Life is dull and much too short. The rest of the movie depicts an attempt by two people to hold the moment, to have a single day that's fully lived.

"Before Sunrise" maintains dramatic interest by keeping the two from ever feeling completely safe. They test, observe and ask questions of each other.

There are moments of awkwardness -- what will they do to amuse themselves? There is also sexual tension. The relationship never finds a relaxed equilibrium. Each takes chances and retreats, and each looks for permission to reveal and feel more.

The film gives us Vienna mostly through the eyes of Celine and Jesse -- seen through a cloud of romantic self-absorption. Beauti ful settings are received by the young lovers, and to an extent by the audience, as mere backdrops to better showcase their youth and happiness.

Friendly strangers turn up -- a fortune teller, a pair of actors drumming up business for a store-front show -- but they seem less like individuals than they do a part of the magic of the time and place.

The film re-creates what it's like to be in a state of heightened longing and sensitivity. Whether it's transitory images in a painting by Seurat, tombstones in an old cemetery or the stillness of an ancient Viennese church at night, everything is funneled through the characters' -- and soon the audience's -- awareness of time running out.

Hawke and Delpy are superb. In scene after scene, with the camera bearing down on them and often keeping very still, the actors bring off pages and pages of scripted conversation with a naturalness that might wrongly

make you suspect they were improvising. "Before Sunrise" puts them under merciless scrutiny, but throughout they remain charming and wonderfully true.

Not everyone will be swept away by "Before Sunrise." Some will say, "Who cares?" But those who come for the ride will find the film increasingly moving, particularly in the last half, when the romantic and goofy Jesse and the pragmatically pessimistic Celine decide that this should be their one and only night, that they shouldn't screw up a good thing with a dwindling correspondence and unkept promises.

TIME SEEMS TO STOP

From there the film becomes surprisingly powerful. You really feel the tug, the import of day turning into night and the dread of night turning into day.

There are moments when time seems to stop -- for example, in the scene where they sit on a bridge and look down on the city. And other moments when you know they're "back in real time," even before they say so.

"Before Sunrise" is not flashy, but it's quietly great -- and at times wise.

When Linklater, who co-wrote the screenplay with Kim Krizan, returns for a kind of coda showing in the cold light of the next day all the places Jesse and Celine visited, you realize just how in control he has been all along. It's pure cinema, a rare moment of sweetness and pain.

If, like his characters, Linklater ever wanted to transcend time, he may have done it with this one. "Before Sunrise" is so simple, successful and timeless that it's hard to imagine it not enduring.